Direct and indirect revenues from mobile applications are expected to top $25 billion globally by 2014, according to a new report from Juniper Research.
The report found that while the overwhelming majority of application (app) revenues are currently accrued from one-off downloads, the increasing utilization of in-app billing to enable incremental revenues from additional mobile content will see value-added services (VAS) providing the dominant revenue stream by 2011.
However, the Juniper mobile applications report stressed that in the longer term, the greatest benefits to operators would be derived from data revenues associated with app usage rather than from the retail price of apps and content – providing that the operators rejected the walled garden approach.
Report author Dr Windsor Holden said: “Data revenue growth is dependent upon operators embracing policies which enable open access – a policy which also involves facilitating app stores which compete with their on-portal offerings.”
In addition, the report noted that, given the fact that app stores currently cater exclusively for smartphones, then operators, developers and content providers would be unwise to ignore opportunities from traditional app and content distribution and monetisation channels.
The Juniper report also found that games will remain the largest category in terms of overall app downloads and revenues, although Multimedia & Entertainment apps will attract the greatest share of VAS revenues from 2009 onwards.
In a separate report, Juniper forecast that growth in user spend on mobile entertainment services will slow dramatically over the next two years unless key markets emerge from recession (see Growth in user spend on mobile entertainment to slow over next two years).
It said that under a worst case scenario of a prolonged global recession, mobile entertainment revenues would increase by nearly $13 billion over the next five years, against a pre-downturn forecast of more than $26 billion.
A report from comScore revealed that the number of US mobile game downloaders grew 17% from November 2007 to November 2008, when 8.5 million people, or 3.8% of mobile subscribers, downloaded a game to their mobile device (see Number of US mobile game downloaders grows 17%).
